Start With Why

There was a stigma against speaking out. “People at the London end of Barings,” Leeson explained, “were all so know-all that nobody dared ask a stupid question in case they looked silly in front of everyone else.” The lack of a clear set of values and beliefs, along with the weak culture that resulted, created the conditions for an every-man-for-himself environment, the long-term impact of which could yield little else than disaster. This is caveman stuff. If the people aren’t looking out for the community, then the benefits of a community erode. Many companies have star employees and star salesmen and so on, but few have a culture that produces great people as a rule and not an exception.
    Trust is a remarkable thing. Trust allows us to rely on others. We rely on those we trust for advice to help us make decisions. Trust is the bedrock for the advancement of our own lives, our families, our companies, our societies and our species. We trust those in our community to care for our children so we can go out to dinner. Given the choice between two babysitters, we’re more likely to trust a babysitter with a little experience from the neighborhood than one with lots of experience from far away. We wouldn’t trust someone from the outside because we don’t know anything about them, we say. The reality is, we don’t know anything about the local babysitter either, beyond the fact that she’s from the neighborhood. In this case, we trust familiarity over experience with something quite important—the safety of our children. We trust that someone who lives in the community and more likely shares our values and beliefs is better qualified to care for the most valuable thing in our lives over someone with a long résumé but from an unfamiliar place. That’s pretty remarkable. It causes some pause when we consider how we hire people: what’s more important, their résumé and experience, or whether they will fit our community? Our children are probably more important than the position we want to fill at the organization, yet we seem to exercise a very different standard. Is there a false assumption at play here as to who makes the best employee?
    Historically, trust has played a bigger role in advancing companies and societies than skill set alone. Like the couple leaving their children while they go out on a date for the evening, groups from within a society would go off with confidence, knowing that their homes and families would be safe upon their return. If there were no trust, then no one would take risks. No risks would mean no exploration, no experimentation and no advancement of the society as a whole. That’s a remarkable concept: only when individuals can trust the culture or organization will they take personal risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole. For no other reason than, in the end, it’s good for their own personal health and survival.
    No matter how experienced, no matter how proficient, a trapeze artist will not attempt a totally new death-defying leap without first trying it with a net below him. And depending on how death-defying the trick is, he may insist on always having a net when performing the trick. Besides its obvious advantage of catching you if you fall, the net also provides a psychological benefit. Knowing it is there gives the trapeze artist the confidence to try something he’s never done before, or to do it again and again. Remove the net and he will only do the safe tricks, the ones he knows he can land. The more he trusts the quality of the net, the more he will take personal risks to make his act better. The trust the circus management gives him by providing him a net is probably afforded to other performers too. Soon all the performers will feel confident to try new things and push themselves further. That collection of personal confidence and personal risk results in the entire circus putting on a much better show. An overall better show means more customers. And the system thrives. But not without trust. For those within a community, or an organization, they must trust that their leaders provide a net—practical or emotional. With that feeling of support, those in the organization are more likely to put in extra effort that ultimately benefits the group as a whole.
    I will admit that there are always those who will take the risk, for the first time or repeatedly, without the net. There will always be those who will explore regardless of